Healthy HVAC Equals Healthy Indoor Air Quality

By Shelly Morrison 

Isn't your work productivity affected by temperature, lighting, air quality or any other environmental conditions? The answer is, it is. Not only it has a real impact on your indoor activities, but it also affects your health optimally. HVAC systems provide ventilation and maintain pressure relationships between spaces of both domestic and commercial environments promoting safe and sound health of an individual. Regarding this, your heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) equals balance your home or office atmosphere by filtering the warm or cold air as needed. 

Failing to check HVAC systems regularly can be costly.

There are many all-in-all air conditioning companies which you should call their professionals for your HVAC repair in San Antonio. They will do a survey initially to inspect if any dust, pollen, dirt or debris circulating your surroundings and also check the building to find any leaks, mold spore is affecting the system. Other than these, especially asthma patients or people who have allergy problems can face severe health disorders if the vehicular environment comfort is not ensured. You must keep in check your HVAC technology annually or twice a year to make sure about indoor air quality. 

When In A Year You Should Check Your HVAC?

Before your city hits the cold weather which approaches the San Antonio, Texas in the fall usually, call local HVAC contractors based in San Antonio who are trusted for heating, cooling and air conditioning services and can regulate your environment through working on following factors:

Factors That Contribute to Healthy HVAC System Performance

• Temperature control, 

• Oxygen replenishment, 

• Removal of moisture, 

• Locating odors, smoke, heat, dust, 

• Finding airborne bacteria, carbon dioxide, and other gases.

To guarantee HVAC efficiency, there are multiple maintenance factors which contribute to healthy HVAC performance but in this time, master only these three factors and make your system runs properly.

1. System Size

System size plays an essential role in healthy HVAC performance. First, consider your home size and ask yourself if your system is too large or small for your home. In the case of too large, the system will waste its excessive power in starting up which can result in short cycling. Secondly, if the system is too short, it can also screw up your home or office HVAC conditions by not handling the load. The air conditioner or heater will take massive time to reach the thermostat's threshold. Both of the cases will end up wasting energy if the right size system is not installed. 

Contact HVAC professionals who can tell if you got poor system sizes and further diagnose whether or not your system fits the load requirement of your home.

2. Preventive Maintenance

Keep up regularly with preventive maintenance schedule to ensure if HVAC performance is doing well or whether it has the likelihood of failing. It is carried out when the equipment is working so that the professionals can then and there detect the downtime and improve on performance worthwhile. That's why you should have a preventive maintenance schedule similarly like a part of your health routine. Just like your body needs a regular health checkup by the doctor, your HVAC system also needs to get check its performance few times a year. Natural airing (ventilation) includes both the exchange of air to the outside as well as circulation of air within the building. It is one of the most important factors for maintaining acceptable indoor air quality in buildings as well in homes. 

Regular maintenance checkup involves testing the system's components and efficiency and fixing any problems encountered during the testing.

3. Indoor Air Quality

Air Quality Monitor

When a system is not cycled off, it leads to poor indoor air quality which makes your HVAC unit to perform even worse making it less energy efficient and consuming more power. Monitor your indoor air quality on a regular basis as it's the best way to promote healthy lifestyle for your family also making your HVAC system more efficient. 

You can also work it out a little by cleaning your indoor air handling units and outdoor compressors and removing the blockage. Check ducts for leaks, clean filters and more. This is a basic you can do to cause your system no-damage. If you fail at these checks, get mentally prepared for costly repairs.

There's another thing you can do which involves cleaning out the inside of your furnace. It will also help you with reducing your electric bills. If you're short of time and a workaholic, feel free to call experts who inspect the heat exchanger to verify there is no carbon monoxide leaking into your home or workplace.

At the end of the day, we advise you to tackle primary factors on your own and for the complex situations, you can call professionals for help to maintain your HVAC performance in a healthy way giving you more comfortable home and office with indoor quality environment.

For more details feel free to contact us:    https://www.beyerboys.com/residential/

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Healthy-HVAC-Equals-Healthy-Indoor-Air-Quality&id=10098276] Healthy HVAC Equals Healthy Indoor Air Quality

New Living

Image by brunosan via Flickr

The Texas flag flies in Houston.

A green building store in the Lone Star State shows how to build a healthy home, and a good business too.
 

Recently, I received a visit from my cousin Amanda Claire DeMers of Houston, who was in Philadelphia to see some of our great historic sites. I've known that she's been involved with the acclaimed store, New Living, which is an eco-smart, green building hub for Houston's sustainability sphere, and a certified "B" corporation. So after a little family catch-up chat at Johnny Brenda's restaurant and pub here in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philly, we discussed some of the innovative work that she and the store has been doing back in her hometown.


How long have you worked for New Living?

I have been at New living for two months, but New Living has been around for two years. I came in with a background in environmental policy, my Master's was on fisheries management, so completely not to do with design or retail or marketing or anything like that. But I met the owners and we got along. I came on and have been working retail there for the past couple months, but I'll be doing some PR and marketing for them - press releases and such, social media maintenance, and then a lot of events in environmental education.

Tell us about New Living - what they do, their history.

New living is a store in Houston and their niche is healthy green building and home. They sell all kinds of home-building products, like counter-tops, flooring, and they also sell organic mattresses and bedding. And then next door, which is actually part of our store but has a different storefront, is a shop called The Green Painter. That opened up six or seven month ago as a split off from New Living, and they sell no-VOC paints, non-toxic glues, wood stains, and concrete stains.

So all of our products are non-toxic and they're all environmentally friendly. But a lot of the emphasis is on the non-toxic. Much of that, to some degree, is because Houston hasn't necessarily been a very green conscious city, and when New Living moved in they thought they were going to be this sort of green store with a straight environmental message. Houston wasn't as responsive to that message as they envisioned, so they started learning more about indoor air quality and health and promoted those ideas, which sometimes goes along with environmental certifications like LEED, though sometimes it's independent. In fact, sometimes it's the opposite - a lot of LEED certification buildings trap the air inside, so they've really embraced the non-toxic banner and it seems to have resonated well.

You bring up a good point. As a trained energy auditor, my focus is often on sealing the "envelope of the home" to improve energy efficiency. We check for high CO levels in furnaces, mold, lead paint, asbestos, pet dander and other potential indoor air quality threats, but there are a multitude of contaminants to consider. We have to be very conscious of toxins as we tighten up homes.

Image by Scoobyfoo via Flickr

Non-toxic materials

Yes, and we can start that by not bringing as many toxins into the building process, which is the significance for having  formaldehyde-free flooring, and surfaces that are antimicrobial and naturally bacterial resistant and don't contain chemical dyes, and wool carpets that don't contain synthetic coatings on them. When you don't bring these toxins into the home to begin with, you start at a much easier place. Then you can begin to manage it with something like an air filter, either for a whole home or maybe just one room. We also sell air filters and water purifying systems.

It seems like it takes more than just standard marketing and offering healthy green products to make your business thrive. You've moved into channels of New Media to advocate your concept. Tell us more about the advocacy side.
  
They've always done pretty well as a business, because, for whatever reasons, Houston as a city is doing well. So we do have customers that have the money to spend on quality home products. The key is making sure we educate people about why our products are the better choice. And there will be a greater role for the educational and advocacy component through time.

We're actually not just a store, we're a certified "B" corporation or benefit corporation, which is a certain way that we're chartered to serve the long term interests of the shareholders and to help solve social, economic and environmental problems, rather than just immediate returns to investors.

Image by ooh_food via Flickr

So this falls in line with business concepts that have been described as an emerging new economic model: A business that's sustainable and socially responsible, but profitable too.

Certain states already have programs in place that to certify and encourage B corporations. And hopefully, someday, it would be nice if there was some sort of tax advantage too. So say, instead of being a non-profit or, well, an oil corporation - somewhere between BP and Oxfam - we could find a place where we received some government benefit of taking on these problems.

Aside from providing non-toxic home products and educational outreach, what other services does New Living offer? Do you work directly with contractors?

Yes, and that's something that's really cool about our business. Downstairs is the store and showroom, but upstairs is sort of this green business incubator, where we have several green designers, an urban renewal realty program, green architects, and a solar company. It's really a hub of green activity in Houston and we've worked hard together to make a green scene here.

That's interesting. Houston doesn't come to mind as top on the list of cities with a strong sustainability community, like say here in Philly, where our mayor has been pushing to make this the greenest city in the nation. How would you compare Houston to others?

Bill McKibben. Image: Wikipedia

Some people say that it's behind major cities, but it's caught up pretty fast. Because we have some money here, it's been able to escalate more quickly.

Actually, one of our main customer components is moms. Sometimes even mom's who's husbands work for a big oil company or in the chemical industry, but they've read some of the popular Michael Pollan, Bill McKibben type books and they're saying "you know, I don't want to bring bad things into my home." Just like the local foods and organic foods movement caught on big partly because moms were afraid of what they were feeding their kids, we're hoping that non-toxic mattresses and organic flooring will follow.

I hope so too. Thanks for stopping by and giving a word to our readers about New Living and your great city. I hope you were able to take in some of the famous sites here as well.--D.A DeMers.

For more information about New Living and to read some of Amanda's informative blogs, visit their expansive website at www.newliving.net.

Coming soon on Home Science: An innovative Philly compost company has been hittin' the streets hauling away stinky stuff from restaurants and supermarkets. Now they're making house calls. Pretty awesome idea, don't you think? (You don't have to answer, just trust us).

 

 Related articles

• Building a Green Home (homebuildingsmart.com)
• Green Cleaning Products: Lose the Chemicals (everydayhealth.com)
• Drink Up | North Philly Beer, Part 2 (tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Building a healthier, greener Google (googleblog.blogspot.com)
• Making Homes Greener in Austin, Texas (energyrefuge.com)